7 cloudy days and counting for Chicago

Tom SkillingCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Chicago has seen seven cloudy days in a row, and Midway Airport weather observer Frank Wachowski had to go back 11 years to duplicate the string the city has just experienced. The month has now logged just 30 percent of its possible sunshine (the normal for January is 43 percent). With a weak cold front moving through northern Illinois, Wednesday could well be the eight consecutive cloudy day, and Wachowski said to replicate that, we have to go back to Jan. 1 through 9, 1992, (six months after the Mount Pinatubo eruption in June 1991 spewed debris high into the atmosphere, cutting down solar radiation for a year) when there were nine consecutive cloudy days.

Cold sticking around

With a strong northwesterly jet stream flow aloft, Chicago will be sitting on the southern edge of an uninterrupted flow of cold air into the western Great Lakes. Temperatures over northeast Illinois will average about 10 degrees below normal Thursday through Saturday. Sunday into Monday readings should moderate somewhat.

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Weather Report is prepared by the WGN-TV Weather Center, where Tom Skilling is chief meteorologist. His forecasts can be seen Monday through Friday on WGN News at 11 a.m., 5 p.m. and 9 p.m.